Home 
 Map 
 ⇑ 

 ⇍   April 3rd, 2005   ⇏ 

Copyright 2005 Michael Anttila

This weekend I started working on my project to build a cheap equatorial mount for my camera that would accurately track the stars. It has been a great learning experience so far, given that I know very little about electronics. This is a working prototype of the interface circuit that will allow me to connect a stepper motor to the parallel port of any computer and control it through software. On Saturday I bought the supplies and built the prototype (I only encountered one problem, which Norm helped me with), and on Sunday I wrote a Python script to turn the motor one full rotation in each direction.

After a successful weekend of building and testing, I decided to take the opportunity to try some macro photography with my new camera. For those who are into photography, this shot was taken with the Rebel XT + kit lens at 55mm (effectively 88mm focal length), 1600 ISO, no flash, f/5.6, and 1/60s exposure time. The four blue wires going off to the right connect to the parallel port, and the coloured wires going up and to the left are connected to the motor, which is the blurry silver thing in the top left corner.

Comments

Here's a great site for you when the telescope mount is finished and you have
taken all the pictures possible with it. Just for fun.
http://www.do-not-sleep.com/
-- Dad

i've promised myself that the next camera i buy is going to have a macro
function.  it definately comes in handy for those close-ups!  nice pic!
-- aaron

POTW - Photo Map - Home - Feedback

Hosted by theorem.ca